James Mason attributed his success as the sadistic 18th-century aristocrat Lord Rohan in this melodrama to ‘sheer bad temper’ at the aggravation during shooting. The film made him a superstar and embarked Gainsborough Studios on a...
Based on Nicholas Monsarrat’s best selling novel, which was in turn derived from his experiences on the North Sea convoys, The Cruel Sea is set in the middle of ‘the battle of the Atlantic’, as the U-boats attempted to destroy...
A pretty accurate re-creation of the big ship Titanic’s sinking, with Kenneth More and Robert Ayres among those trying to remain stiff-upper-lipped as the vessel goes down and the rescue is apparently bungled, with no lifeboats returned and...
Two of the finest actors of their generation, Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, square off in this splendid production of Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play. The lifelong friendship of Henry II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, is...
Fine performances from an ensemble cast, which includes Robert Donat in a cameo, enliven this basically humdrum historical drama. Inspired by the fight of Irish farmers against the wealthy landowners trying to kick them off their land, Captain...
Ken Russell’s biopic of Rudolph Valentino, one of the silent era’s greats, is not a patch on the numerous biographies with which he made his name in the early 1970s. Told in flashback at Valentino’s funeral, this episodic film...
Battle Of The River Plate, made only 17 years after the event, depicts one of the defining moments of the early, comparatively quiet stages of World War II. A German pocket battleship, the Graf Spee, was causing havoc amongst the British merchant...
Every English schoolboy is taught the story of Captain Scott’s failed expedition in the Antarctic. How he and a small band of companions spent almost two years battling against impossible odds to reach the South Pole, only to find that...
With the war won, the British film industry began the action replays, showing in minute detail how Our Boys gave Jerry a sound thrashing. The exploits of 617 squadron were ripe for such treatment. In one of the most celebrated raids of the war, they...
Starring David Niven (who was born in Scotland), this tartan-drenched historical drama charts one of the great escapes: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s five-month flight from the English in 1746. The escape followed the Stuarts’ vain attempts to...